rtilizers for the soil that yields the bread of life. But
the mainspring of the world's onward religious movement is not in them,
nor in any one body of men, let me tell you. It is the people that
makes the clergy, and not the clergy that makes the people. Of course,
the profession reacts on its source with variable energy.--But there
never was a guild of dealers or a company of craftsmen that did not
need sharp looking after.

Our old friend, Dr. Holyoke, whom we gave the dinner to some time
since, must have known many people that saw the great bonfire in
Harvard College yard.

----Bonfire?--shrieked the little man.--The bonfire when Robert
Calef's book was burned?

The same,--I said,--when Robert Calef the Boston merchant's book was
burned in the yard of Harvard College, by order of Increase Mather,
President of the College and Minister of the Gospel. You remember the
old witchcraft revival of '92, and how stout Master Robert Calef,
trader, of Boston, had the pluck to tell the ministers and judges what
a set of fools and worse than fools they were--

Remember it?--said the little man.--I don't think I shall forget it, as
long as I can stretch this forefinger to point with, and see what it
wears.--There was a ring on it.

May I look at it?--I said.

Where it is,--said the little man;--it will never come off, till it
falls off from the bone in the darkness and in the dust.

He pushed the high chair on which he sat slightly back from the table,
and dropped himself, standing, to the floor,--his head being only a
little above the level of the table, as he stood. With pain and labor,
lifting one foot over the other, as a drummer handles his sticks, he
took a few steps from his place,--his motions and the dead beat of the
misshapen boots announcing to my practised eye and ear the malformation
which is called in learned language _talipes varus_, or inverted
club-foot.

Stop! stop!--I said,--let me come to you.

The little man hobbled back, and lifted himself by the left arm, with
an ease approaching to grace which surprised me, into his high chair. I
walked to his side, and he stretched out the forefinger of his right
hand, with the ring upon it. The ring had been put on long ago, and
could not pass the misshapen joint. It was one of those funeral rings
which used to be given to relatives and friends after the decease of
persons of any note or importance. Beneath a round bit of glass was a
death's head. Engraved o